And of course, I’ve got the jitters. My hands shake, my spine tingles. This is my gut telling me shit’s about to go down, because of course, nothing is ever easy.
Derek acts oblivious, keeps joking. I want to tell him to shut the f**k up and pay attention, but I know better. He runs his mouth because he's nervous. He feels it, too. He chatters like a goddamn blue jay when he's scared. I can see his eyes scanning, see the tension in his shoulders, in the way his rifle is almost at his shoulder, ready to fire.
We round a corner, and my gut clenches. I slow, scan the rooftops. Derek is doing the same.
"Feel it?" I ask.
"Fuck yeah. Shit's about to hit the fan."
The others are piled up behind us. I see nothing, so I continue, even though my instincts are telling me to stop, go back, stay, get the f**k down. I creep forward a few more feet, and then my gut is screaming too loud to ignore. I shove Derek to the side and drop to the ground for no reason whatsoever. As I taste dirt, an AK barks from a rooftop. Bullets snap through the air where we had been.
Fucking knew it.
Someone behind us shoots back—Barrett, I'm pretty sure. Only Barrett fires like that, three-three, pause, three.
Then all hell breaks loose. AK fire erupts from all directions, and suddenly we're split, half our unit cut off from the other half. Derek has a bead on an insurgent on the roof opposite us, so I wait until a muzzle-burst gives away a location and pour fire at it. I see a head and shoulder pop up, black metal and tan wood and black-spot eyes. I squeeze the trigger, and a burst of pink mist tells me I dropped him.
There's a pause, and Derek and I lurch into a run, breaking for a better position. I hear boots pound behind us. We're nearly there when I hear a hackhackhack and then fire and pain gouts through me, centered on my left shoulder and thigh. I'm spun around, fall. I'm dragged by the hand through the dust, bleeding. The strain on my wounded shoulder as I'm pulled is agonizing. I see Derek beside me, firing at a doorway. I see a shape, a muzzle-burst, bullets peppering the dirt and the wall near us.
Derek hits his target. I watch, the world sideways, as the muzzle-burst goes silent mid-bark. Derek shifts, prepares to drag me farther into cover. Then a figure, thin and young, stumbles from the doorway, bleeding. He throws a grenade, and I try to move, but Derek is already on top of me, rolling away with me, and the seconds until detonation tick in my head like thundering drums, each one a heartbeat.
Heat and fire and pressure erupt, the sound so deafening it becomes silence, and we're thrown. I feel wetness spread, feel pins of pain stab me. The silence continues and I wonder if I've gone deaf, but then ringing fills my ears, and I know my hearing will return eventually.
Derek is too still. Too wet. I find my feet, bullet-pierced leg screaming, refusing to support me, but I don't care. Can’t afford to care. Adrenaline powers me. I grip Derek's red-slick hand and pull him, needing him to be okay. Rifle fire is a distant roar, and I see puffs of dirt marking Death's walk toward me.
My side hurts, low, near the hip. Shrapnel, I think. I push my hand against it, trying vainly to dull the pain with pressure. I get Derek a few feet away, closer to the doorway that would provide some cover, but then I'm struck again in the shoulder. I fall to my knees, find my rifle, fire blindly. Find a target, fire. Dropped him. Another—crackcrack—dropped him.
Fuck, I hurt.
A slug of agony hits my thigh, right near the original wound. I can't stay upright any longer. I hear more rifles firing, M-16s, an AK, and then a detonation. Someone shouts my name, Derek's name. Barrett. I want to answer but have no breath in my lungs. It's been stolen by pain, by shrapnel and bullet holes.
I succumb to the pain, let it wash over me. I drift and float, and then I feel something push me. Pain breaks over me like a wave when I crash to my back, and I force my eyes open.
Goddamn, she's beautiful.
It's a stupid, random thought, out of place on this battlefield, but I can't shake it. She's kneeling above me, her head-scarf thing, a hidab, or...my pain-fogged brain won't spit out the right word. Hijab. That’s the word. It's coming loose around her face, tendrils of bottle-blonde hair escaping to drift across her delicate-featured face. I want to touch her finely sculpted cheeks, but my hand won't work.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
She looks at me in confusion. She doesn't understand.
I my head and see Derek. He's a f**king mess. Panicked horror is a thick, hot knot in my throat. NO! Not Derek….
We've been buddies forever. Second grade. He called me a sissy and I beat his ass and we've been buddies ever since. Joined up together, got lucky, and managed to get through Basic in the same unit, assigned to the same grunt squad. Impossible luck, to stay together like this for so long, through war, through death.
Now he's dead.
"Derek?" I claw toward him. Poke him; he hates being poked. "Derek?"
I look at the girl, bright brown eyes like sun-bathed earth fixed on me. She touches two fingers to Derek's neck, looks back at me, shakes her head. Her meaning is clear.
"DEREK!" I can't help the scream.
I know I'm crying, feel the salt burning down my cheek, but I can't stop it. I don't care if I'm crying in front of this gorgeous Iraqi girl like some kind of goddamn sissy. Derek is dead.
Dead.
Fuck.
Darkness swallows me.
* * *
I wake up in the darkness. Shadows have eaten me. Silence sits on my chest like a wet, heavy blanket. I look around me, see shapes in the shadows. A chair, a table. A mirror reflecting shards of starlight. A square of lighter black with a swatch of pinprick stars: a window. Hard earth beneath me.
I want to get up. Need to get up. Can't stay here. Gotta get back to the guys. I manage an inch upward before pure agony bolts through me and I cry out, a soft grunt, high-pitched and girly. Goddamn sissy whimpers. I grit my teeth to silence myself.
Scratching, motion, rustling cloth. Then a face appears above me, blocking my view of the stars. Blonde hair hangs loose in long waves around her bare shoulders. I'm struck again by how stunningly beautiful she is, even in the dark of midnight black.
She says something in Arabic and touches the center of my chest to push me down, a feather-light touch between bullet holes in each shoulder. I stare at her, unable to look away. I wish it was light so I could see her better.
She tugs a thin blanket farther up my body, and I realize I'm clad only in my skivvies. Clumsy bandages are held on by tape, not medical tape. Regular tape. I laugh, which hurts. The girl tilts her head in confusion.
I point at the bandage, the tape. "Did you do this?"